Earmark Podcast | Earn Free Accounting CPE

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Blake Oliver: [00:00:18] Hello and welcome back to Earmark. I'm Blake Oliver, your host. Most CPAs work 60 plus hours during tax season. Yuri works 40 and outside of tax season, while others grind 40. Plus he works 10 to 15 hours. And today we're learning how. Welcome to the show, Yuri Kapilovic.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:01:51] Thanks for having me. Appreciate that. Great intro. Thanks.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:55] Yuri. You, uh, you call yourself the fun CPA? I do. I imagine a lot of that has to do with the time that you've created for yourself in your schedule. Yeah, it is. It is the beginning of December as we record. You're getting ready for tax season. Uh, tell me, how many hours are you working?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:02:15] So, yeah, I mean, right now and obviously it's also tax planning season. So it's a little bit more a little bit higher than usual. And outside of that, but we're talking probably about 10 to 15 hours a week of work work and then social media stuff on, on, on the side of that. And the fun I guess, is the event, social media and other random stuff that I, that I do.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:37] So 10 to 15 hours of like working on the business. Do you count the social media as part of that or is that extra.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:02:44] It's extra, it's extra. It's the fun part. Yeah. You know, fun fun and not fun at the same time. You know, obviously it's got a lot to it to build the audience to, to, to do the engagement, to talk, to answer comments and do all that takes up time. Probably if I added that up, you know, you probably add up another ten at least per week on that.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:03] So I love this so much because most CPAs, we start out in large firms. I only spent a year inside of a large firm, but I think it just takes a year to sort of get the picture. And I did see my colleagues working long hours. I attempted not to. I think I did pretty good 40, 50 hours when I was at a large firm, but there was so much pressure to work hours, long hours, and there was this culture of grinding. Long hours were sort of it was like a badge of honor. Did you experience that in public accounting?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:03:41] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And and for me, I've actually jumped. So I've had seven firms. I moved jumped seven firms during my career before going out on my own. And the main reason behind that was really because I was looking for that perfect place to call home to become a partner, you know, to really do the thing that that everybody tells you you should do. Uh, I realized that doesn't really exist. Uh, the perfect place, because everybody is doing exactly what you just described. Every single firm was more or less the same, and the pressure of billable hours is the main thing that every single firm would, would, you know, push you towards. And wearing that as a badge of honor, just like you said, was huge. You know, it'll be like it was sitting there and, you know, you would try. You would start packing up at 6:00 because because you want to go home and have dinner with your family. And it's like, oh, packing up early for the day is that, you know, half day today. I can't even I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've heard that. Yeah. You know, said and and this, this, you know, and but that's how it was. And then and then when you come in the next day, people are like, oh, so you left then, you know, but I left at 1 a.m.. Yeah. Like that did not that just did not appeal to me.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:47] Yeah. Yeah. There's that there's that desire to look busy all the time. I would actually, uh, my hack was I would schedule emails and outlook to go out later at night. Smart. So even if I left the office and if I had all my work done, I could, like, appear busy, but that just seems like so kind of messed up to me. You know, why did why do we have to do that? Why do we have to maintain this appearance of it was busy.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:05:11] It was that it was pretend to look busy. It was, I distinctly remember. I mean, I remember this, like, as if it was yesterday. One of my first days when I was at E, actually. And I was sitting there, you know, and I'm done, like I'm telling you, like I was probably not even six months in to my career. And I'm sitting there and I'm going, all right, um, like I'm done. Obviously, I don't have much to do because I'm like a brand new person at this, at this firm. I ain't got much going on. I'm just kind of wrap up and somebody was like, hey, just just like, turn on YouTube and just watch some stuff and like, look busy because it's going to make you look better. You're going to get better work that way. And I just remember I even then I was like, nah, I just packed up and went home. Like, I have time to just sit around here and and and waste my time on that. But that's the expectation. Look busy, eat hours, you know, manipulate time sheets. That's that was my specialty over 12 years in these big firms.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:10] Yeah. Like how so?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:06:12] In the sense that, you know, as I'm sure you've, you've heard many a times with the push for more hours and just showing more and more and more chargeable hours, efficiency is punished. Right? So if you're good at what you do and you can get a ten hour return done in five, that's bad, you know, because even though it's better for metrics for purposes of the realization and blah, blah blah, um, on the account. But that's not the people looking at your hours. It's it's the schedulers and the, you know, admin partners and all these things. And they're saying, you know, if you were assigned, let's say, six returns that were ten hours each. You're supposed to hit 60 that week. But you did them in five hours each, right? Instead of instead of ten hours each. You did it in five hours each. So now you did it half the time. But if you report it, you show that 30 hours during busy season, like you would get, you know, emails saying, what are you doing? You know, you're not hitting hours. Um, you know, we're, you know, what are you doing next week? You get assigned triple the work next week, so you don't do that again. And so when I say manipulating time sheets, I mean you got to get crafty with how you put the hours in so that you're under the radars. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:27] So you want to hit that budget but not go over it, not go under it. That's exactly.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:07:32] It. So, you know, if you were assigned something for ten hours, but you did it for five, well, you're not you're not rewarded certainly for reflecting the correct hours. So you're going to put in whatever you need to put in so that you stay off the radars and you know that maybe, maybe not what everybody wants to hear. But that's the truth.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:51] Yeah, yeah, that was probably the most frustrating aspect for me as well, was if I got more efficient, my hours went down. I individually didn't look as productive, and so I didn't have an incentive. And I think there's something about you, Yuri, that doesn't like that either. Right. And even though we play that game, we don't like how it feels. And that is what I think pushes a lot of high performers out of public accounting and larger firms, is that we feel like we can't get ahead. If we do a great job, we just get more and more and more work, more clients, more returns. Yeah, whatever it is. Right?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:08:30] Yeah. One of honestly, one of the most frustrating experiences, aside from what I just described with the hours, was actually when you're a high performer and you do well and you, you know, are efficient and everybody likes you. Instead of asking you like you or me. Yuri. Hey. What do you want to work on? Like, what do you love working on in a kid? Like. And what gets you going? For me, it was small business, by the way. You know, instead of that, it's. Hey, we are gonna assign you to the highest profile clients so that you can further your career and that, you know. And this was not just in one firm. This was in multiple firms. Instead of listening to what the people want and being like, what drives them, it's like, oh, you're good. So you must want to do the $300 million business with 5050 state returns and complexity. Like, no, I don't want to do. I don't want to have none of that. I wanted to work on 50 Million and Below, which I always was vocal about. As you can imagine, I'm not a quiet person. Um, and I will be vocal about that. And I would say, hey, you know, I want to work on those accounts. I don't want to work on the 300 million, because that's not small business to me. You're never talking to the owners of a $300 million company. You're not. You're talking to a VP of tax or whatever it was. What drove me was talking to the owners, being involved and not being seen as a advisor, a true advisor. But unfortunately, those kind of clients in the bigger firms were like, no, you don't need to work on that. That's, that's beneath you. Which was sad to me.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:02] Interesting. So you now own your own practice. You can set your own hours. You've set yourself up this way, ten, 15 hours outside of tax season, no more than 40 during. Um, what was the breaking point for you in public? When did you decide I need to go out on my own and why?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:10:23] That's a great question. Uh, you know, when when I go back, I don't think that necessarily was a breaking point, per se. Like a particular moment where I said, that's it, I'm done. It was more so the culmination of the fact that I've been at seven firms looking for the perfect one and every single firm ended up looking like this. You know, the first six months was a honeymoon phase, and I was like, this is it. I love this place. Like, you know, everybody is great. I'm getting the clients that I want. You know, everything. The next six months were like, okay, like, I don't really like this. I don't like that. I don't like that. And then the last six months were just me being miserable, unhappy, frustrated, and butting heads with partners left and right because, you know, they didn't like that I was pushing, you know, and making waves. Right. And the reason I actually left in the first, like initially, and the reason why I really started my firm was because an opportunity came to me that was just so unique to me. And, and, and I thought that that was this was it. This is the reason why I'm going to go. So basically, a friend of mine selling off $100,000 worth of his practice to me, um, so that, you know, and I was like, this is perfect. Like I was making $150,000 at the time. So I was thinking, I'm like, I'll make 100,000in my first year like this is comfortable enough.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:11:40] Uh, you know, plus a little bit of work on the side will be okay, you know? Um, so that was the reason why I gave notice. And unfortunately, five days after I gave notice, um, that that friend of mine, the guy who was selling the practice, got sued, uh, by his partner because he was essentially not allowed to sell any of those clients. They did not belong to him, technically. Um, we have anything in writing. We didn't have anything like that. It was kind of like a word of mouth thing. I was like, yeah, this is cool. And yeah, learn my lesson real quick on that one. So five days after I give notice, it's, uh, you know, I immediately get the notification saying, hey, you know, it's not going to happen. So then I got a choice to make in the next two weeks, am I going to kind of tuck the tail and say, hey, never mind, guys, I'm coming right back. You know, I'm not quitting. Um, or do I or do I go with the let's try to figure it out and see what happens. So I went the second route. Um, and to do that, you know, without freaking out because I'm a I'm a pretty, like, risk averse person, you know, by even though you may not be able to tell sometimes.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:42] Yeah, most of us are right. That's where we're CPAs.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:12:45] Exactly. Cpas. Risk averse. That's what we do. So we manage that risk. I was like, the only thing I know is I got ten years plus of experience in public accounting. Let me leverage that and contract somewhere.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:59] So you you overcame that fear. Um, how did you do that? I mean, that is a big deal to leave your job making 150 K. Yeah. Were you the sole breadwinner in your family?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:13:16] Uh, so my wife also worked, uh, but we also had a kid, um, he. My son was three years old at the time. Yeah. And, you know, health insurance, all the things that we all like to call the golden handcuffs truly are golden handcuffs. But the biggest one is the insurance. That health insurance. Man, it is scary. It is scary expensive when you're on your own. Um, and certainly one of the biggest preventers from folks to go out on their own. But yeah, absolutely. A very scary leap.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:43] So how did you overcome that fear? What did what did you think? Um, you thought about withdrawing your resignation, and I'm sure the firm would have taken you back. Yeah. What kept you going?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:13:56] Two things. The primary thing that kept me going was my very, very firm belief in never, never going back on an offer. So never reneging your, um, notice. So, you know, I've seen this happen time and time again when people across the seven firms that I've been at would give notice, you know, the firm would convince them to stay or whatever it is, and then they would stay. And then the when they would stay and they would kind of come back, it was miserable. It was extra miserable because the firm was kind of like, hey, we own you and whatever it was. Um, so that was one aspect I didn't want to do that. I didn't necessarily want to just tuck my tail and come back.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:34] Yeah, it's generally considered a bad idea. Like, if it is.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:14:37] Like it is, don't.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:38] Yeah, yeah. Accepting the counter-offer to stay. Most of the time it doesn't work out. You end up leaving anyway. Later.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:14:44] Exactly. And I've seen it happen time and time again in exactly that position you ended up. You ended up, you know, leaving anyway when much more unhappy in the first time around. You're better off leaving, going to wherever you were going to go, and then possibly coming back down the line rather than reneging on the spot. And plus you burn the bridge with the other person. Anyway, I digress. Um, but the other and the other piece of it was I knew that I want to give it a go, and I knew that I had that marketable skill of at the time again, 12 years public accounting, a manager experience with people making 180, $100 million a year in income. You know, all that. I knew I could be marketable somewhere. So I started reaching out. You know, I started reaching out on LinkedIn. I started reaching out to friends and I got a, um, uh, like a part time gig, basically as a, as a as a contractor in the city in Manhattan. Um, you know, took the bus basically 2 or 3 times a week to go over there and helped out working on smaller tax returns. I enjoyed that, but the commute was a little bit killer. Going to get the kid from daycare, you know, coordinating all that. So then I found another, uh, contracting role with a firm here in new Jersey. Uh, also 2 to 3 days a week. And I'm a very since then again, not intentional, but since then, that has been my advice to anybody that's looking to go out on their own, which is try to find a contracting gig, because those 2 to 3 days will keep the lights on while you build your firm the way you want to with the other 3 or 2 days.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:15] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, and then you transition, you gradually build up your own book of business. You get comfortable, you feel confident, and then, well, now you've you've got your own firm. You don't have to do that contracting anymore. How long did that process take to get from full time employment to full time owner of your own firm?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:16:40] Yeah. Without contracting, um, I would say about a year and a half years to a year and a half. No. And I could have. And I could have ended it beforehand. The contracting role and eased off. But, you know, I was just helping them out. We were helping each other out. You know, it was kind of a good relationship. I was working with some good people, uh, at that place. So I figured, you know what? Let's let's keep it going. It was giving me. It was probably giving me between four in the off seasons, 4000 a month in the in the busy season, it was 8 to 8 to $9,000 a month. So, I mean, you know, again, to my, to the point of before. And you can control that yourself, right. You know, you want to work a little more. You want to work a little less. It's truly flexible in that regard. And as you're building your own firm and the way that you want, it allows you to focus on what the dream firm that you want for yourself to be, instead of what I'm sure we're going to jump into later. Instead of taking any and everything at whatever somebody's willing to pay you. And that that to me is important.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:40] Yeah, that's super important, being able to take on the right clients. Not taking every dollar that comes in the door is really important. If you want to build that lifestyle firm, if you want to build a practice that gives you freedom. Absolutely. I want to welcome our live stream. Viewers, thanks for joining us. Uh jogendra. Great to see you here. If you are attending live, watching us on YouTube or on LinkedIn or wherever, go ahead and ask your questions to Yuri. I will highlight the comments and we'll get your questions answered. I think there's a ton that we can learn from Yuri about building a firm and building something that is sustainable. Yeah.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:18:24] Um, side note that's the crazy thing for me, by the way, to just be here. Like, in general, as as building the LinkedIn presence has created this world where people ask me questions, people, you know, it's it's crazy. And being an advisor to to folks as they build their own firms.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:42] Well, it's been great getting to know you online. Um, likewise. We haven't met in person yet, right? I always I can't, not yet. We will.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:18:49] We should though. Yes, we got it.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:51] Um. It's funny, I forget you know who I. Who I've actually met in person and not you. But you're you're the reason we got to know each other is because you are active on social media. Not a lot of CPAs are. Um, it's a pretty small group. And you've been really generous with sharing your story and your advice, and I just love that you share your the fun you have that, that, hey, I can be a tax CPA and I can go out and I can work out every day. I can, uh, go out on my boat. I can host awesome networking events. And you love to put those together and do those. And it's so much fun to just watch a fellow CPA having fun. I feel like we don't have enough fun in our profession.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:19:43] No, no we don't. It's true. It's really what's missing. And and the fun CPA, by the way. Never again. Much like anything else that I do, nothing is intentional. It really is not. And the fun CPA was a hashtag that I just started typing randomly into my posts, like about probably about two and a half to 2 to 2 and a half years ago while posting, I just wrote the fun CPA. I was maybe on my bike or something like that. And and yeah, I mean, it became a differentiator. And I knew I was onto something when I went to my first like, uh, little conference thing. It was a like rich people with their like, expensive toys. So it was like private helicopters, private jets, things of that nature. And then I literally reached out to the guy who organized this and said, hey, can I have a booth at this place? He's like, what do you do? I'm like, I'm a CPA. He was like, we have literally never had a CPA offer to be in this, so sure. He's like, usually we charge 5000. I was and I was like, you know, how much would you charge me? He goes, how about 500? I was like that. Let's go. You know, like so I set it up. I got a sign printed that said the fun CPA. Um, hashtag the fun CPA. And I knew I was onto something because nobody could process that. Like, literally people walking by and they're going, the funk, PA, the fun, the the what? Like they couldn't put that together. And when somebody can't put that together, that's a good thing to, to do.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:04] And you've really leaned into this I mean on your website the fun CPA Co. Yes. You've got it there. Hashtag the fun CPA. Yep. High net worth strategies for small business owners. Your fun small business owner Our advisor?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:21:19] Yes.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:20] I mean, this must be working for you. Clients?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:21:24] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:25] Clients like it.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:21:26] Clients like it. Um, and I think, again, inadvertently, with the content with seeing me on things on, on on shows like this, on networking events, whether my clients go to them or not, they sometimes do. But when I go to them or not, I think there's a level of pride on the client side to say like, hey, that's like, that's my accountant. And everybody's like, that's an accountant like that. That like, what do you mean? Like, you know what? I'll tell people that I organize events. And the first question is like, what do you get out of them? You know, and I've been asked this a ton of times, like, you know, I'll organize an event. I usually come out of pocket. At this point. I've had about four events, and I came out of pocket just shy of $10,000 in total across all of them. And people are like, so what? What is your goal of this? You know. What are you aiming to do here with your events? And I'm like, I have no goal. I literally am here to put these people together so they can interact amongst each other and do business together. I'm just here in the background. Now, obviously that that does eventually lead to some clients, but that's the goal of that. Just have fun, do networking in a different way, do accounting in a different way, where we're talking first, you know, this is not a transaction, you know, and I think that that's really what it all translates to when I talk to some people about the brand that's, you know, that's really what it comes down to.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:50] Yeah. People don't want to be sold to they just want to develop relationships. We like to work with people we like. And so if you approach it from the standpoint of, I'm just going to get to know local entrepreneurs, business owners have a good time, the work will come.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:23:10] Yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%. The work will come. And I see Lucas in there. Appreciate it.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:15] Hey, Lucas, thanks for joining us. Lucas says accounting is fun. I love your posts. Yuri. Yuri?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:23:22] Yes?

Blake Oliver: [00:23:22] Would you would you stand up and. Aw, yeah. Show us your.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:23:25] Shirt. Let me move. Let me move this thing out of the way for a second. Lucas, shout out to you straight out of public accounting. Yuri shirt.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:32] My shirt is shirt says straight out of public accounting. Yeah, I love that shirt. And you got that off of, uh, was that Lucas Lucas?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:23:41] Accounting couture? Accounting couture drapes me in in in the best of accounting. Accounting jokes. Uh, but, yeah, this one gets a lot of views at the at the gym. Actually, I love wearing this one to the gym.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:52] And Jenna says, I love that shirt.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:23:55] Yeah. It's hilarious. And the people like, what is that? What is that? Public accounting, especially people that I could see at the gym that are at firms because we all know if you've been in accounting for for a certain amount of time, I know you got that swag. You know, I know you got that, you know, firm swag, sweatshirts and all that. So I see him wearing like, you know, UI, KPMG, Deloitte. I see him looking at me too. So you know, um, yeah, definitely a great shirt.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:22] People in our live stream are loving the shirt. Yeah. Go get that at Accounting Couture.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:24:28] Yes. Um, pick it up. Yeah, pick it up. You can go reach out to Lucas, too.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:32] Yep. Um, so have you have you lost any clients because of your fun CPA approach? Yuri?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:24:43] Oh, interesting question I have. I have certainly lost clients that whether I blasted them out myself, uh, or I lost them because, you know, we didn't line up. We weren't a good fit. Um, did I lose them because of the fun? Cpa? I don't think so. And those that and those that would have possibly left because of. They're not down with the fun. Cpa. Probably don't want to work with them anyway, right. So it kind of builds this this almost community if you will, of folks that that lead with fun, lead with a good time and business later. Which is who I enjoy working with. And then that also translates to them understanding the value of our relationship.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:26] So I know everybody is interested to know how you built a practice that lets you work the 10 to 15 hours during non-tax season, keep it to 40 during tax season. Uh, because that's really, really hard to do. I do not meet many CPAs who run their own firms that can claim that. Uh, the ones who do work fewer hours outside of tax season tend to just do a ton of hours during tax season. It's a lot. They are they are burning the midnight oil for months. And I can kind of see the appeal of it. But also like I've worked in seasonal businesses outside of accounting and I've done that grind and it's like brutal. It takes you out of your routine. You forget how to, like, go work out, you know? Yeah. You miss your family for, like, 100 days straight. So let's talk about, like, how you actually designed your firm to do this. Sure. Um, yeah. Tell me about what you did. That's different than a traditional firm.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:26:31] Yeah. So I'm going to start it again by saying the same thing that I've been saying, which is nothing that I do is intentional, right? I didn't intend to build this lifestyle firm, necessarily. All I knew at the time is that I just wanted to have my freedom to do whatever I want, like, I didn't know how to get there. So it's not like I had this blueprint of, this is what I'm going to do to get to working less than 40 hours a week during tax season, and to having great clients and all of that. Um, so it kind of evolved over the time. Um, and the other thing that that really got me over the years and, you know, really kind of hit me in the, in the, in the emotional like kind of feelings is when I was at the bigger firms, the amount of times that I would see folks just put their lives on hold for four freaking months at the beginning of the year, and then for two or a month and a half to, you know, in the fall would kill me inside and to the point where people were planning babies around taxis. And that's insane. I mean, I've literally heard and I'm so verbatim like somebody was saying, like, if my baby is born during taxis and like, I don't know what I'm going to do. Yeah. I'm like, that's crazy. It's hard enough to to, you know, have a baby period. You know, let alone. Yeah. I mean, that's you know, that's.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:48] What I've heard from the dads, right? Like, imagine if you're actually giving birth. Like how I can't even it's not even compatible, right.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:27:55] You know. Yeah. So God bless the, the, the women that are, that are in the profession. And it is not easy, you know, I mean and I feel for them and, and people would miss their birthdays. By the way, my birthday is April 11th. I'm not I haven't missed a single birthday in any of the years, and I left at 5:00 on my birthday and on April 11th at every single firm. You can imagine the looks I would get. Um, but I don't care, you know? But but the point is to to go back to your question, because I digress a little bit. How did I build the firm? How did we get here? So obviously it.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:23] Wasn't it wasn't on purpose. You didn't set out to say, I'm going to build a firm like this. I didn't.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:28:28] Set out. Yeah, I didn't set out in a in a particular list of steps that I knew in my mind would somehow get me here. It was more so.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:36] You were selective, right? You were selective with the clients you took on?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:28:39] Yes. So where I was. Yeah. So, so. And the reason I was able to be selective is because I had the contracting role. So contracting role first, which gave me the 4000 to 9000 a month depending on, you know, depending on how the month shook out. Um, yeah. You know, and the amount of work that I was doing, whether it was busy season or off busy season. So I had that comfort level. That's great. Had a good amount of savings saved up. Also great mentally. Um, and then I started being selective. I always wanted to be selective. I always wanted to work with business owners primarily. And I started actually at about 800 as a minimum fee. I said, you know what? Like, I don't care because I'm making 4000 to $9000 a month anyway. If you don't want to be my client, we're good, you know? So I think the answer, the question of what's the difference between how I set it up versus your traditional most people thinking, most people's thinking is take on any and everybody that's willing to work with you at whatever fee you know, you like. They were there, they're willing to pay. Now, here's the problem with that. And I'll do this math. I do this math all the time. Let's just say you've created a firm, you know, and you're doing, uh, you know, you're charging $300 per tax return, right? Let's just say and.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:53] You got three, unfortunately, is when you look at the surveys is what a lot of tax payers are charging for an individual return. It's very low.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:30:02] 100%. It is very low. But you know what? Let's let's even go a little higher. Let's let's say you're you're you're more ambitious. So you've charged 300. I mean, sorry, you charged $500 a tax return. You got 300 clients, right? That's not bad. It's a pretty good place to start. You've taken on a bunch of people, you quit your firm, you started hustling, and you got 300 clients. At $500 a piece. That's $150,000 that you're about to make in your first tax season. Great. In general. Right? But here's the problem. 300 clients. And I don't care what anybody tells me, you're not doing a return in 15 minutes, even though that's what people will tell me. I said you won't. Why? Because you need to collect the data, send out organizers, or send out something that's going to tell people what to give you. Answer a million questions about whether this W-2 was right or this is the 1099 you're seeking, and you're answering questions, so you're drowning in that admin aspect. Work until you've collected everything. Now, when you've collected everything, yes, you can probably get that return done in 15 to 30 minutes. Self review. Get it out the door, collect signatures and answer a bunch of questions on the tail end. One hour. I'm going to just go at.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:05] Least at.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:31:06] Least. But let's just say one hour. Now you're talking 300 clients. One hour each. That's 300 hours. But guess what? Information in our world, tax world is not coming in until at least at best case scenario, early February. Most likely mid-February. So let's call it February 15th. So you're talking February 15th to April 15th. You've got eight weeks. So you take 300 divided by eight and you're talking about 37.5 hours a week. That's not bad right. But that that's best case scenario.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:39] That's best case.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:31:40] And that's not how it works.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:42] Yeah. In real life you're going to be spending way more than one hour per client because way.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:31:47] More you're going to.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:48] Have I mean, if if you have to meet with the client, add another hour.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:31:51] Yep.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:53] If you have to drive around, which a lot of people do, then you got to add in that time, I think we just we just totally underestimate the admin and the. Oh, and then there's just the time it took to get those clients in the first place to have all the prospect meetings.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:32:08] Oh yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:08] Prospect meetings, engagement.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:32:09] Letters, engagement letters, onboarding and all that. Right. That's a good that's a that's a my example here is a best case scenario. But realistically you're not even getting the information by February 15th. You're probably going to get it closer to March. So you're really tightening up. And that's the reason why everybody's got that crazy crunch. So from my perspective, and just to give context to everybody, um, I got about 100 clients right now, 100 clients, high value. So I started when I was to go back to what I was saying, I started at $800 minimum. I said, whoever's willing to take me on, let's go. As time grew and I've, you know, made relationships with some folks and and people gave me good advice, uh, and, or they gave me good referrals, uh, some of my own clients, a lot of word of mouth growth. I I'm still not on Google. I'm all word of mouth primarily. And LinkedIn, you know, networking with other folks like, you know, financial planners. Shout out Mondo. Um, you know, and Joe Stabile and a few others out there that are always a bit in my corner referring me, high quality folks that they work with. So. So that's what LinkedIn also did for me. But then as time moved on, my fee started going higher and higher. And right now I'm at I'm at a minimum of 2000 for any return. So here's how the conversation typically goes with a new prospect client that's looking for your 300 to 500, you know, cheaper, uh, you know, returns like, you know, from a price perspective and they're price hunting.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:33:32] Here's what happens. They're going to come. They call me up or, you know, they reach out. Hey, uh, you know, I was kind of saw your content or saw this or saw that, and I'm really interested to work with you. Um, you know, are you taking on clients like me? And I'll say, hey, you know, are you a business owner? And they'll say, uh, no, you know, I have a W2 only. I'm like, listen, I'm happy to work with you W2 only. That is totally fine. I have a few clients like that to my minimum fee is 2000, and I stop and then they'll say, oh, wait, 2000 for my return. My return is very simple. What do you mean, $2,000? What? What? You know, and there's that little, like, hesitation. And I'm like, yeah, you know, look like I focus on business owners, add value. And quite frankly, with a W-2 only, there's not that much value that I could add to you. Happy to refer you out to someone else. That piece of it is the is the difference between a lot of people's mentality, because some people's mentality is. But it's $500 that I could do in 15 or 30 minutes. That's what I hear all the time. It's just easy money. It's easy work. But don't forget my math.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:37] And they're not considering the opportunity cost, because every $500 return you take is a $2,000 return you're not taking potentially.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:34:45] Exactly. And yeah. And and I could miss, you know, to that math. I'm not great at math obviously I'm an accountant. But you know, I guess with.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:52] Math you've got Excel open, right? You're doing it.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:34:54] I'm doing it, I'm doing it. Yeah, I'm doing a calculator. But, um. But, you know, I got $500 and you can miss four clients, four prospects you can miss at $500 a piece and land a $2,000 one. And guess what? You just quartered or, you know, you know, one fourth your work right load. So the other challenge and I'll just finish up with this. The other challenge that that happens is if you've already built a firm that's got a lot of volume, but you want to get to the value aspect, you want to get to the, uh, you know, value creation and charge more. It is extremely difficult to just all of a sudden be like, yo, by the way. Yeah. So I know I was charging you 500. Yeah, it's a thousand now. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:39] That doesn't doesn't feel good.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:35:42] No, it doesn't feel good. And now you're not only going to lose. You're not going to lose. You're going to lose. Not only lose the client, but you're going to lose the rep reputation. You're going to lose, you know, the street cred because they're going to go to their friends and say, no, no, don't use him. Like he just doubled my fee out of nowhere.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:57] Yeah. Andrew says Yuri's advice on his minimum fee for new clients is great advice, and I think people can benefit from hearing how he approaches these conversations. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. I agree Andrew. Um, the hardest thing is to raise your fees when you've lowballed to begin with. So having the courage to hold that line, give your high price. Yeah. Even if you have a range to to to to price it ideally for you to begin with and then just not say anything like what you did, you say the fee and you wait for the reaction and you don't negotiate against yourself. Nope. That's really, really hard.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:36:40] Yeah. And I want to add one more thing about the brands the fund, CPA and and what it also does posting on social media and that and doing networking events. I've heard this before, and it didn't translate to me until somebody told me this and they said, Yuri, you know, one of the biggest challenges that I have with my current accountant, let's just say, is that what is it? Everybody knows what their unreachable, right? Yes. That is one of the biggest things. I can't get Ahold of my accountant. I've been emailing them for months on end, and I can't get Ahold of them because of my math over there. You know, of of all those returns that they're cranking out and they're just done afterwards, and it's hard to get Ahold of them, you know, multiply one question by 500. You got a bunch of questions. Yeah. Now what? You know, for me, what happens is what somebody has told me is they're like, we see your content, we see your doing networking events. We see you at the gym, we see you doing this. And the first thing is he's available and I am I have 100 clients. They can text me any time, even if I'm at the gym when I'm here. And I'm calling this today I had a call with somebody while I was on the, you know, the little elliptical thing. You know, like.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:46] I got time. You I can do it. I can do it. How? How quickly do you get back to your clients?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:37:51] I mean, I tell my clients, just text me, please. Like, you know, obviously email, text, whatever, but text is.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:59] That's very controversial, Yuri. Like, I have heard many people say, never give out your phone number to clients, but I can see how you can do that because you have a very select client list. You don't have to worry about them blowing up your phone all the time, all hours of the day.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:38:13] Do you you know what happens when, like, as the price went up and as you're dealing with somebody who's seeing your value, you know what goes down? The number of questions, the number of of bothers like now. And I'm just saying, you know, again, nothing is intentional, right. Like I'm just seeing that happen when I would have a 300 when I first started, I would I did do that kind of like especially when it was on the side or family and friends with 400 bucks, a tax return, $500 tax return. Those smaller tax returns would give me more strife and headache. Then a $2,000 tax return or a.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:49] 10,000, isn't it?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:38:49] Or a $10,000 tax return. And I have my my most client that pays me the most amount of money for the year. They're just shy of $25,000 for the for the year. They when they message me, it's like, hey, I'm really sorry to bother you. I in my mind I'm like, you're sorry to bother me. Like we're good man. Like, don't worry. Don't worry about it. You're not bothering me. Like, this is what I'm here for. But the point being is, like, for me, it's it's it just started translating into that, and I was like, this is great. You know, a $2,000 client feels the value you're providing to them and will probably ask you less questions. But what I also layer on is I have a quarterly package and I have a monthly package, and I have a tax only package. And so by by doing quarterly, this is one of my biggest sells. With the quarterly we're forcing that conversation quarterly we're forcing interacting quarterly. It doesn't take up that much of my time per se because it's scheduled and whatever. And then, you know, and then they're getting the value they're having, you know, a consistent meeting.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:50] What is included in the quarterly package.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:39:53] So in the quarterly package it is obviously tax return prep for the business and personal returns. And then it's basically just for quarterly about one hour discussions planning meetings.

Blake Oliver: [00:40:07] Yeah.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:40:07] Planning meetings. To be honest, you know, what's funny is nobody when people would sign up for that and I don't know, maybe they expect something. But really we're just chatting for an hour. And I've learned like over my 12 years. And now, I mean, at this point, 14 years in, in public, like people just want to chat. And while you're chatting, we got issues that come up. So sometimes when we force that conversation on a quarterly basis, yes, I'm telling them roughly what their tax is going to be. I'm telling them what the estimated payment is going to be, but by us chatting, we can learn something else. Maybe they're maybe they decided to open up a new business. Like how many times have I learned of something in in my prior experiences? Learned of something my client did in April of the following year? You know, but you had no idea they did that. But by forcing those conversations, you're forcing that discussion. You're able to also raise raise your fees higher. Those, by the way, start at 1500 a quarter. Um, and and typically they'll include, you know, obviously they'll include the tax return prep. And I try to figure out what, you know, those those conversations are worth, so to speak.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:12] Alex asked my next question, which is, and I think I know the answer to this. Do you have any staff or you do you do this all solo?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:41:22] Um, I do it all solo. Uh, pretty much mostly. But I do have I do outsource, uh, locally. Not not overseas. Uh, here in Brooklyn. I outsource my bookkeeping.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:33] Got it. So you are offering bookkeeping to the clients? Is that the monthly package?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:41:40] Correct? Yep. The monthly package is the one that has the what I call the full service. Whatever you want to call it. White glove, full service where it's still quarterly, by the way. So the key to me is, is to keep the quarterly meetings. Like just because you're paying me monthly doesn't mean that we're going to be chatting monthly. So I set up the expectation in that way so that I'm not bothered on a monthly basis. Obviously, if there's a question and we need to discuss something, you have a question. It's it's it's really just free flowing. But the what's the word I'm thinking of the, the, the deliverable, so to speak, is the quarterly meet ups to discuss said things, the ability to reach me more or less any time. But again, most people don't. And then the the actual tax returns.

Blake Oliver: [00:42:24] The beauty of having 100 clients is that you can do this yourself. You don't have to have staff partners. And I feel like that is really important when you're building your firm to decide. Yeah. To to know. Am I going to build a solo practice or am I going to build a practice with a team? Because if you have the solo practice, you really need to be picky about the clients. You need to keep the list low. You need to keep your capacity high. And if you're building a team, it's different. You could take on those $500 returns if you have built the team. But but that takes a lot of time to manage. I was yeah, at least half of your time, if not more, is going to be just managing people and processes and workflow. And it adds this huge layer of complexity. Huge.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:43:16] So two points to two things on that. I was just talking to somebody just about this via text. One of my one of my OG followers from, from from day one. You know who you are if you're if you're watching this. Um, you know, we were chatting about these exact two options, and I think, you know, sometimes I may come off as like, you know, and I don't want to come off as as value as the way that I've set it up is the only way or anything like that. There's plenty of folks doing very well with the more volume based $500 to $700 tax returns. The processes have to be in place, and yes, the staff have to be in place and, and and your and your systems have to be in place to, to do that. And I think you can do very well in doing that, whether that's overseas, however you structure that. Um, I think you can make it work. I think the problem is, is this is what we're talking with this person is when, if, God forbid, one of your top guys or girls leaves because, you know, people quit, people leave. You got to pick that right back up and you're doing triple the work now to catch up to to know what they did last time. You're not disconnected. You're not. This is not a passive thing. You know, you're you're involved. You're involved day in and day out and sometimes working more than these people on making sure that they got work.

Blake Oliver: [00:44:34] And that's why the most difficult phase of building a larger firm is when you go from 1 to 10 until you have ten people on your team. Yeah, you as the owner are the one picking up the pieces when things fall apart, which is going to happen because turnover in our profession is as high as 20%. Yeah. And, you know, even if you create a great environment for your team, there's a chance you're going to lose one team member every year. Yeah, that is just a given. You should just assume that you're going to lose somebody to another firm or to going off on their own. Right. So so that is the hard part. Um, and, and.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:45:17] I'm at this point to be, to be perfectly honest, in my firm where I'm toying with the idea of bringing someone on and my approach and my goal in, in at this point where I've built the firm thus far is if I do bring someone on. They're not working more than 40 hours a week. Just like I'm not working less than, you know, like I'm not working more than 40 hours a week. Whoever's working for me is not gonna be working more than I am. And that's the firm I want to build, so I so. So I'm in this. You know who? What came first? Chicken or the egg situation where I want to build a firm that, you know, and get to a point where I'm comfortable enough to say, okay, I got enough work here to give someone and take everything off myself. But when I'm working 35 hours to 40 hours during tax season, I'm like, oh, should I do it? Like, you know, like.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:06] Because it's a tough choice because.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:46:07] I'm not working it that much. So it's but it is this point now where, where it's getting there. Um, I'm. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:16] Is that because you want to increase your income? Russell asks. And feel free to decline to answer. Russell asks. Yuri, you've shared how you were doing financially earlier on making about 150 K. Yep. Are you comfortable sharing your current income?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:46:31] Yeah, yeah, I was actually just about to say it, uh, but, uh, before. So. So I'm going to be this year, I'm probably going to close out just about 225, you know, just just probably be around depending on how things come out, maybe two, maybe 250, uh, depending on how it plays out in the next couple of weeks. But my goal is, you know, I mean, and again, I'm comfortable. You know, people ask me all the time, they'll say, hey, you know, you're looking to get more clients or you're looking to bring up. I'm looking to bring on good fit clients any time I'll figure it out. If I get too busy. That's my that's a that's an easy problem to solve for me. Um, but yeah, you know, I mean, it it certainly it's certainly amazing to, to be in this position and obviously overhead costs all that. I'm at home all the time, which is good and bad. So my, my costs are fairly low. Um, but yeah, but that's where I'm at. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:47:19] So that's interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I think it's very enlightening. Um, and I want to play devil's advocate. So hit me. Your typical midsize accounting firm partner on average. And I'm sure there's a huge range, of course, within the partner groups as you go from junior to senior. But I have read, according to Inside Public Accounting, that the average partner is making like $800,000 a year at a top 400 firm. Um, fair. It might be that might actually be top 100 outside of the big four though, just excluding them. Okay. So, like, you can make a lot of money if you get to partner in a traditional firm. Yeah. Why? Why not?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:48:08] Why not do it? Why not? Why not here. So it's a really good question. And and and believe me when I say this again, I'm a big proponent of being on your own. I'm a big, big fan. Right. Of going out on your own. But it's not for everyone. And I'm and I'm also very big on making sure that I say that, you know, if you're if you're 85% happy at your job right now, going out on your own is not going to give you that 15%. It's actually might take away 30%. That's my one key to make now to to to do that. I mean look yeah I could have stayed at uni. I could have stayed at any one of the firms that I was at. And yeah, probably would have been doing really well. 700,000 $800,000 salary. My problem is I, you know, I would look at who is above me, right? I would look at what I'm going to become. That's what I would do as as a younger staff, you know, I'm looking at these partners who are in the office more than I am. I'm leaving and they're still there, which obviously was looked at very much frowned upon, but I just didn't care. But, you know, they're looking at me leaving, but I'm looking at them too. And I'm saying, all right, this guy is like ten years older than me, you know. Yeah. Their partner. That's nice. You know, that salary is nice, but they're here and they have a boss, just like I have a boss. And so where is the. You know, in my mind, if I can make $800,000 and work 10 to 2, that's I would have stayed.

Blake Oliver: [00:49:31] Right. But you can't. A m to 2 p.m.. I don't know any partners that do that.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:49:35] Nobody has flexibility. And most of them are staying past the other ones. Most of them, which also another thing that that kind of hits me too is, you know, have canceled vacations. I have seen it. Yeah. They have canceled vacations to to to work. They're working on vacation. I got two kids, man. You know, my my youngest my my my my oldest is just turned six and my youngest is about to turn two. That's not even.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:03] Not worth it. Yeah, I did a I did a similar calculation where I said, I don't know if I intentionally did this and, you know, but I saw how hard everybody above me in the firm was working. I was a manager when I left, and I said I had a young kid as well. A son, and I think he was 4 or 5 at the time, maybe younger. And I said, I value I made a determination. I value my time more than the money. And I suppose it's easier to do that if you just don't expand your spending to match your income. Yes, yes. That helps a lot, right? Yeah. It does. I mean, you can I don't know, I always found it strange. Like I wonder, like what? What do you do with that salary when you're working, you know, an average of 55 hours a week year round and you cancel vacations? I mean, it's nice to have it, but I, I don't I don't know if I'd have the time to spend it or.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:51:08] I mean, look, I, I've, it takes me back to, to to my memories of, of the bigger firms and dealing with some of these issues of these people. Clients sold his business for $200 million. Um, and after everything was going to net about, uh, about 75 million or 80 million or so, and he's trying to he was on the younger side, I think he was around 50. And he's like, how long is this money going to last? Me so, you know, we say, you know what? What are your expenses? Clothing alone was $1.2 million a year every single year. So yeah, that money when we calculated he by the way, he required a Rolls Royce every year. New. Um. So yeah. Look, you know, if I say required, that's what his. That's what.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:50] He wanted.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:51:50] That's what he was doing when he was making 20 million, $30 million a year. My point being is there is, you know, no cap to how much you can spend. You can spend, you can spend a boatload of money, uh, you know, every, every year, every week if you wanted to. I can easily spend $800,000, um, a week if I wanted to. But I'll help you do it. Yeah, we could do it together. We can just throw the craziest events. But, but but the point is. Yeah, I mean, you know, and then and but by the way, the short end of that answer was about five years was how long that money was going to last. Wow. It was 55. So I feel like.

Blake Oliver: [00:52:24] I could live on. How much money was it?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:52:26] Uh, like 75, 80, I think something like that. Was the net net after. Uh, yeah. You know everything.

Blake Oliver: [00:52:32] Yeah. I could easily live on that the rest of my life. Um, I mean, it's all about. It's about like. Yeah. What do you really need to be happy? I feel like we don't ask ourselves that question enough in the profession. It's it's, you know, it goes back to this, um, billable hours thing, right? And it's it's all like, top line, which to me is crazy that we value in accounting. We we, we focus so much on inputs like billable hours and top line revenue dollars in the door. And yet what is the most important number in accounting? Yeah, it's it's your net. Yeah. Your net income. Your profit is what we all learn how to calculate. That's the entire point of accounting is to calculate profit. Yeah, but we don't seem to do that when we look at our careers because. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:53:26] We don't do that when it comes to our careers. Uh, partners have been just drove me mad in all these firms that I would that I would leave because of this principle. I mean, the classic example was I obviously will not name the firm, but, you know, I'm sitting there as a manager and, and, uh, I get a proposal. Hey, you know, we got a new firm. We got a new client in in the door. You know, this is amazing. You know, really great opportunity. We're going to give it to you because you're amazing. And, you know, obviously, when you're amazing, all you get is just more work. And quite frankly, not the most enjoying work. So I'm looking at this client. All right I'm looking at it $250 million revenue, 50 states and a massive sale f reorg, uh, which is wildly complicated. Uh, sale, you know, that that that was all structured and everything to do that return easily took the team about 75 hours or so, 100, maybe even more than that. I don't even remember anymore. National tax got involved. Everything.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:54:20] $15,000 fee. That return should have been $150,000. But that goes to the point of the partner on the job are rewarded by top line revenue and what they bring in their book of business isn't that their book of business is gross. And so yeah, but the the hardest thing about accounting and what we do when you look at the billable hours model, which is trash, you know, but the biggest thing about it is that there is no like when you tell me that as a manager, I'm billed out of 485 or $500 an hour to the client that you then discount 70% of standard right off the bat, and then you adjust it down if the hours are too much because you have a flat fee, you know, so it doesn't really matter. So there's no like actual cost. The costs are basically just fixed my salary, the rent, and maybe a few other things in there. That's where I think a lot of partners kind of get hung up on the top line revenue only because really, my hour doesn't cost anybody $500.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:29] You're a fixed.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:55:29] Cost. I'm a fixed cost. My fixed cost is my $150 salary. And you're just trying to grind me out, you know, to to work more so you can bill out more, but really just keep me busy enough to make my $150,000 worthwhile. That's it. Yeah. I'm not, you know, nobody is. You know, nobody's spending $500 on my car. That's not my cost.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:49] That was the biggest revelation for me was when I realized that the, um, the all these metrics of, like, realization, utilization or imaginary. Oh, it's so imaginary. They don't exist. It's made up. It's it's just it's industrial cost accounting applied to people. Yeah. Which doesn't it, doesn't it it I'm not going to say it doesn't make sense because it is better than nothing. But it also made more sense when we had less automation. But it's really like not what we care about. What we care about in the end is what is the profit of our firm. And, and and we also don't even consider the non-financial metrics. Right. Like the work life balance. Like how happy are we?

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:56:33] I think yeah, 100%.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:35] How much time do we spend with our families? How much time do we have for our hobbies? Or we didn't even get into it? But like you spend a good amount of time on a boat in the summertime, right? Yeah, I rent it.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:56:43] For the record, it's not mine.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:45] Well, see, that's the smart thing to do. Yeah, right. Why why, why buy something when you can rent it.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:56:51] Yeah, they got some. They got these cool concepts. I mean they got them throughout. But it's like these boat clubs and you basically just pay monthly and you get to take them out.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:58] Yeah, more or less. No commitment right.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:57:00] No commitment. And I'll do networking events on them. We have the most amount of fun on those. And we go out on the boat. And my summers, man, I mean, I'm not my friends make fun of me. And it's partially true. Like, I don't really work. That's the that's the ongoing joke. Now, you know, granted, like there's admin stuff, there's all the stuff that I, that I do, but I mean, you know, especially in the summertime, it's like 2 to 3 hours a day at most. And we can do it from anywhere. But but yeah, I think as a profession we need to refocus. And especially if we want to fix this pipeline problem that we all keep talking about, that has been just basically old school partners that won't give up the ways that they've been doing things for years. Um, you know, the way we fix that is by focusing on the people, your number one asset. This is what it used to frustrate me to no end. It is as if everybody forgot that your asset in an accounting firm and these big firms that I've used to work at is not your clients. Their clients are important, but your staff are number one. And when you neglect that, when you forget that and you just grind them for hours, billable hours, they mean absolutely nothing. It is of no surprise to me that that people are leaving.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:08] No surprise that we have an issue getting young people to want to work in our profession. Yeah, it seems completely obvious, but I guess that's because you and I went through it and we saw it and we rejected it.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:58:20] Um, but there is an upside. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:22] Before we go, we got a few questions I just want to hit on. Sure. And feel free to just give a quick answer. Um. Penny asks, do you find navigating reciprocity issues is a hurdle when taking on clients located in other states? Nope.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:58:37] No, there's no no issues there.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:40] Yeah. Um, Marta wants to know what advice can you give for a new grad with a BBA in accounting? Starting an Ms. in taxation and on track to CPA. Nice. I didn't have any internships. However, I have experience working as a billing coordinator slash accounts receivable specialist in healthcare. Trying to find an internship in a corporate setting. But it seems I'm overqualified. But associate positions are looking for experience. It's frustrating.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:59:06] Yeah. That is that is frustrating. Let me just read that out. Can you are you able to put that back up?

Blake Oliver: [00:59:11] I'll put it back.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:59:12] Up for you. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:14] So I guess the question is like yeah, yeah. Like how do you how do you get into accounting when you don't have experience. Right. Yeah. Everyone wants experience. Yes.

Yuri Kapilovich: [00:59:21] So what I will tell you is it's something that I've done back in. So I graduated in 2010. There was a, you know, the recession and everything was extremely difficult to get any position. And I literally would just call around local CPA firms, anybody that, you know, especially this time of year as everybody is preparing for just to get some sort of experience. And I know it's it is frustrating to hear I feel you. Um, and, you know, especially if you do not have any internships or anything like that. Um, and then, you know, as you get at least a little bit of experience, then you can apply, you know, with at least that experience or stay in that firm and keep learning. Quite frankly, smaller firms are phenomenal to learn at.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:57] Um, yeah. And and I would say too, when you're looking at job postings and they say you have to have experience. Um. Ignore that. Yeah. For the entry level positions. Because that's ridiculous. And they're not going to get the people with experience applying to those jobs. So just like, yeah, this is something we tend to do is we we underestimate ourselves. Um, like don't apply for jobs even if you're not totally qualified.

Yuri Kapilovich: [01:00:23] Yeah. And message me also I'm not sure where you're at located, whatever it is, but shoot me a message. Dm on on LinkedIn. I'll, um, see what I can do.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:30] And Shivani was just curious. We may have already answered this. Does the $2,000 that you charge include questions that the clients ask? How often do you do the check ins with them? I mean, it's quarterly, right?

Yuri Kapilovich: [01:00:41] So yes. So that 2000, that was a minimum fee for tax only Prep. So minimum fee for any just tax return only. Okay. The quarterly starts at 1500 a quarter. So 6000 total for the year. At which point I don't really care how many questions you ask me. Um, so so so the quick answer is the 2000 for the ones that are like just tax only. Not really. Because again, if you're looking at time, which I don't track, but if you're looking at time versus whatever, a couple of questions here and there or not gonna make it.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:10] You just build that in. It's built into your fee as people asking questions.

Yuri Kapilovich: [01:01:13] Exactly, exactly.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:15] Awesome. Hey, Yuri, thank you so much for joining me. Where should people connect with you online?

Yuri Kapilovich: [01:01:20] Yeah, LinkedIn. Linkedin is where I reside. I'm also on Instagram, the phone CPA. Um, but LinkedIn is where I kind of thrive and hang out most of the time and maybe, maybe a bit too much to be, to be quite honest. But that's all good. I do what I can.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:34] This hour flew by. Yuri. Yeah, so many valuable insights. I really hope it helped out anyone who's thinking about going off on their own. Maybe it'll help them get set up, right. I know it will. I hope so. Take on those right clients and right size their practice. And it's just so inspiring your story. So thank you for sharing it with me and our audience.

Yuri Kapilovich: [01:01:56] Thanks and thanks for having me on the show.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:59] Stay tuned for a brief message about how to earn continuing professional education for joining us today, or listening to this episode or watching this recording. You can download the earmark app and take care of all your CPE before the end of the year. It is completely free, so go sign up today. See you around Leary. Thanks.

Yuri Kapilovich: [01:02:19] See you later, man. Thanks for having me.